A number of senior Liberal sources have questioned the influence of Advance Australia, with some arguing the rightwing advocacy group made “no difference at all” to the election outcome and others warning it “undermined” the celebration and value it votes.
The criticism has sparked a bitter blame sport, with Advance’s govt director, Matthew Sheahan, accusing “bed-wetting anonymous Liberals” of “looking to blame everyone but themselves”, and including that Advance “does not exist to get hopeless Liberals elected”.
Advance claimed its federal election marketing campaign – bankrolled by $15.6m in donations throughout the 2023-24 monetary yr – to be a “success” that “destroyed the Greens” and led to “terminal declines in their primary votes”.
However one senior Liberal MP stated that whereas Advance might have broken the Greens, this finally benefited Labor, which gained the seats of Melbourne, Brisbane and Griffith. They stated Liberal preferences finally decided this consequence, not Advance.
A NSW Liberal celebration supply, who spoke on the situation of anonymity, accused Advance’s marketing campaign materials of alienating some undecided voters in goal seats. They described the teams’s marketing campaign materials as “extreme”.
“It plays to the Liberal base or to voters further to the right of the Liberals, but it can distract and undermine our own messaging,” stated the Liberal supply. “I wouldn’t say on balance that it aided the Liberal campaign.”
One other senior Liberal supply stated Advance inadvertently “undermined the Liberal campaign” in seats held by teal incumbents.
“Their advertising focused on attacking the Greens, but all that did was drive up the teal vote,” stated the senior supply, who additionally declined to be named so they may converse freely.
“Their messaging also confused voters and led people to put the teals and Greens equal last which meant Liberal votes could not be counted [as the ballot was invalid]. Their poor judgment in their campaign strategy might be the difference between winning Bradfield, or not.”
Late on Monday, the unbiased candidate for Bradfield, Nicolette Boele, overtook her Liberal rival, Gisele Kapterian, with a slender lead of 40 votes.
Sheahan stated Advance didn’t distribute materials in Bradfield and didn’t marketing campaign in Goldstein or Kooyong. He stated the end result in these three seats had nothing to do with Advance and that recommendations in any other case have been “just wrong”.
“The Liberal party would do better to focus on how they managed to lose 11 seats to Labor rather than on the three seats Labor took from the Greens,” Sheahan stated.
“All of this shows that many Liberals have learned absolutely nothing from their worst ever defeat. Fresh out of a shocking campaign, they are looking to blame everyone but themselves.”
In Victoria, Advance was bankrolled by a $500,000 donation from the state department’s nominated entity, the Cormack Basis. The inspiration additionally allotted $1m to the Liberals in the identical yr.
Whereas one Liberal MP stated Advance made “honestly no difference at all” to the election outcome, a former MP stated the celebration would finally realise the group was not a sustainable marketing campaign affiliate. They cited the group’s embrace of “populist” tradition struggle points, suggesting they solely appealed to a small subsection of voters.
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“They are taking a lot of money from a lot of people who are being hoodwinked,” they stated. “They are not spending it [effectively], and what they spend it on is high-profile, low-impact campaigns that splinter our electoral coalition.”
“While it may be difficult to get that through to Liberal party members and supporters because of the Sky After Dark effect, ultimately, the truth wins out.”
In response, Sheahan stated he wasn’t stunned some Liberal voters had adopted Advance’s marketing campaign materials, claiming “their own campaign didn’t have any”.
“No one should be surprised that bed-wetting anonymous Liberals are backgrounding against Advance and don’t have the guts to stand by their comments publicly, I wouldn’t put my name to their campaign either,” he stated.
“The truth is that Advance does not exist to get hopeless Liberals elected, it instead campaigns to promote and defend Australia’s freedom, security and prosperity.”
Advance claims to have delivered “millions” of broadcast advertisements and flyers throughout the marketing campaign and splashed its messages on billboards, bus shelters and vehicles. Evaluation of public information indicated the group spent $1.7m on social media advertisements with $239,300 focused at key seats.
The group paid to advertise the slogan “weak woke and sending us broke: Anthony Albanese has got to go”. It additionally campaigned for an finish to public funding for welcome to nation ceremonies earlier than Peter Dutton’s public feedback on the difficulty – which have been criticised by former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull as “pure culture-war stuff” that “turns a lot of people off”.
